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‘I thought I just did.’
This time it was Caroline’s turn to offer up a faint smile. ‘Harder.’
Evie stood.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Max.
‘To abuse your brother’s throat.’
She found him in one of the bedrooms, slinging clothes into a suitcase with little care as to how they landed.
‘Get out,’ he said when he saw her in the doorway.
‘No.’ Evie made herself continue forward, shutting the door behind her, and moving forward again until she was well into the room, but not so close as to be within reach. ‘You’re being childish, Logan. You’re letting your fear of behaviours long gone colour your vision of the present. You need to learn how to deal with the person I am now. I need to learn how to deal with you.’
‘Childish?’ he said incredulously.
Was that really as far as he’d got with her words? ‘Don’t forget fearful.’
He pinned her with a fierce gaze.
‘Why else would you be running away?’ she pointed out as gently as she could.
And received silence in reply.
‘Do you feel guilty about some of the things we did together? Is that it? Because you shouldn’t. You had my consent.’
‘I know that, Angie.’
‘Is it because you exposed your deepest desires to me, and I just fed them to your family?’
‘Those desires started—and finished—with you. They don’t belong to me any more. And, yeah. You could have kept them to yourself.’
‘Maybe I thought your family needed a better explanation than the one they’d been served. I didn’t realise you were only interested in being truthful up to a point.’
‘You should have.’
She wanted to rattle him, Evie realised. Pick away at his anger and his armour and see what was underneath. ‘You can’t dominate me any more, Logan. You need to realise that.’
‘I don’t want to dominate you,’ he muttered. ‘I never wanted that.’ He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and looked away. ‘But it happened.’
‘I thought I was in love with you. Week one of an intensely sexual, sensual relationship,’ she argued. ‘So much to feel and to learn and, yes, my focus was on pleasing you. I like to think I’d have regained my equilibrium at some stage. That the relationship dynamic would have evened out in time. But I guess we’ll never know.’
‘I don’t want to dwell on the past, Angie. I just want you gone from my life now.’
‘Which is in itself an exercise in enforcing your will over mine.’ Evie moved forward until she was crowding his space; nothing weak about that move. ‘That seem right to you?’
‘You can’t marry him, Angie.’
‘You really think Max would still have me after the fuss you just made?’
‘He’s got fifty million reasons to ignore the fuss I just made,’ said Logan gruffly. ‘You don’t. You need to end this now.’
Logan’s hand went to the back of his neck. From there, it was only too easy for Evie to let her gaze run over the hard angle of his jaw, the stubble just starting to show, and from there to his lips. A woman could fixate on those lips.
‘Don’t,’ he warned huskily.
‘Don’t what?’ Wonder if she could coax them open? Wonder what it would take to make them say the name Evie instead of Angie? ‘Don’t tempt you? Don’t wonder what we might have had if you’d stuck around long enough to find out? Because I do wonder what we might have had together, Logan. I can’t help it. And I’m sure as hell wondering it now.’
‘Nothing good.’
‘You don’t know that. You barely know me. What if I am a match for you now? Ever thought of that?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should,’ she cautioned gently, and touched her fingers to his lips and he went still as a statue but he let her do it. ‘What if we could bring this passion between us under control?’
‘We’d get lost,’ he muttered as her fingertips strayed to his jaw. ‘I’d get lost and I can’t afford to, Angie. I can’t.’
‘What if I know the way?’
‘Do you?’ he asked, and then his hands were on her waist, dragging her towards him, and his lips crushed down on hers, desperate and tortured, no half-measures with this man and there never had been. It was all or nothing, and his kisses inflamed her as desperation turned into desire hot and sweet. And then he took his tongue to her mouth and lit an inferno.
A step backwards towards the bed for him as Evie set her palms to his chest and drank deeply of his passion and his pain. A step forward for her, and then they were falling, and he was beneath her, and his eyes were closed and his ravenous mouth never left her skin.
Her dress proved a poor barrier against Logan’s clever hands, the thin shoulder straps sliding down, and then he swept the bodice down to reveal the swell of small breasts and the tips of her nipples. He set his tongue to one, and then lips, and suckled hard and Evie gasped as he took her to the edge of pain, and he knew exactly where that edge began, damn him, and when to retreat and bring pleasure coursing in its wake.
Palms to his shoulders, with only the warm cotton of his shirt in the way and she wanted his clothes gone, and hers, but when she tried to undo his shirt buttons he wouldn’t let her, pushing her hands away with ruthless efficiency. ‘No,’ he muttered.
And then he slung his arms beneath her thighs and slid her up and over his chest and onto his mouth and licked his way past her panties and into her, and if she thought he’d been a skilled lover ten years ago it was nothing to the expertise he wielded now.
With tongue and with hands he opened her up and drew her out, until her gasps became pleas and her pleas turned into a breathless stream of nonsense as she rode him, no room for his pleasure now, it was all about Evie, and what this man had always been able to do to her in the bedroom, and that was make sensation the only thing that mattered and self-control nothing more than a wispy memory.
This wasn’t submission, she thought hazily, sliding her hands down to tangle in his hair, holding him exactly where she wanted him and it didn’t take long, not long at all, before Evie shot to orgasm, wave after wave of pleasure so fierce and fine that her body arched like a hunter’s bow.
He let her rest, momentarily. He let her catch one breath, maybe two, and then, just when recovery seemed possible, Logan clamped his mouth over her again and came at her sideways with his tongue and slung her skywards once more.
No control over her response whatsoever as she cried out her release and prayed she hadn’t been too loud, but it wasn’t submission. Evie clung to the faintest of hope that surrendering to pleasure wasn’t submission. It was just …
Sensitive now as she toppled forward, her forearms landing on the bed above him and her head resting on her arms. A tremor shook her, a juddering reminder of where she’d just been and what Logan had just done to get her there.
‘That wasn’t submission,’ she said breathlessly as she tried to think of a smooth move that would get her body back down level with his body.
There was none.
‘I was on top,’ she said as she crawled back down his body the clumsy way. ‘I am on top.’
Which sounded lame, even to her ears.
‘I could have done anything with you, Evie. Anything, and you’d have let me.’ He worked his mouth across her nipple again and had a little party there and all she could do was whimper and strain against him and hope to hell he got it into his head to party harder. ‘What is that if not submission?’ he muttered.
‘Participation,’ she said. ‘Participation resulting from stimulation. You need to work on your definitions.’
And she needed to work on him. Cautiously, Evie inched her way further down Logan’s big body until her face was level with his and her hair fell around their faces like a curtain.
He didn’t look rested or anywhere close to content. Evie closed her eyes and rested her forehead gently against his, breathing in the scent of him and the scent of her still on him. He tasted of her too, as she licked at his mouth, coaxing and cajoling until he did what she wanted, which was open for her with a groan, but when she went to undo his belt, he clamped her wrist and dragged her hand back up to his chest.
‘Don’t,’ he said against her lips and she pulled away, just a fraction.
‘Why not?’
‘No condoms.’
Which sounded a lot like an excuse. ‘Another way, then. Same way you did me.’
‘I want—’
Yes, he did want. She could feel him rigid beneath her, digging into her. ‘Hard,’ she murmured.
‘Yes. I want hard.’ As if the admission of specific needs and desires was something to be ashamed of. ‘And rough.’ He licked at her lips as if soothing away fresh wounds. ‘Too rough for your mouth. Don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Hands,’ she offered. ‘Yours and mine. Rough.’
He shuddered beneath her, but he still wouldn’t let her hand go any lower than his chest. ‘No.’ With their lips barely touching and a shield of black lashes concealing his eyes. ‘You need to leave, Angie. Now. I can’t do this.’
‘Why not?’ She could think of plenty of reasons. They were in his mother’s house. She was—supposedly—still engaged to his brother. Not that it had stopped him. And then there was this fear he had of dominating her, of hurting her, and that was the resistance he couldn’t get past. Same reason they’d parted all those years ago.
‘I don’t understand you.’ Evie backed off a little, pulled the straps of her dress back up her shoulders. ‘Condoms can be purchased. Needs can be satisfied without anyone getting hurt. And my doing as you ask and leaving your room is not submission. It’s listening and responding and it’s action born of concern. For you. For whatever’s going on in that hard head of yours.’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she put a gentle forefinger to his chin, and leaned down and gently forced eye contact. Turmoil there, and plenty of it. Black eyes blown with darkness and desire. ‘You savour me with one breath and turn me away with the next. Want to tell me what that’s all about?’
‘I really don’t. Angie, please—’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Just go.’
Time to smooth down her dress with fumbling fingers and hope to hell no one saw her on the way to the guestroom. She didn’t understand this man who lay so unmoving on his bed, one arm behind his head, one hand hooked over his belt as he watched her through slitted eyes, his erection still straining against his trousers. Her gaze fastened on his lips next; he had such sexy, snarly lips.
‘Your mother said something about your father being a man of strong passions.’ Uncontrollable passions, maybe. Caroline had implied that Logan had similar issues. Mothers knew these things. ‘Are you close to him?’
‘My father’s dead,’ answered Logan flatly.
‘Oh,’ she said with a grimace. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ So many things about this man that she didn’t know.
‘No great loss. He died when I was ten.’ Logan closed his eyes and shut her out, put his forearm over his eyes for good measure. ‘My father was an abusive, controlling bastard. When my mother finally worked up the guts to leave him—and me—he blew his brains out.’
Evie stared at him in horrified silence. What did a person say to that? Where did a person even start? ‘Logan—’
‘Go,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Please, Evangeline, just go.’
And this time Evie complied.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_cf54ca43-621d-59ad-92ae-8ab80e435b1f)
LOGAN remembered to breathe again once Angie had gone and the door snicked shut behind her. He shouldn’t have told her. It wasn’t something he talked about. Not with his mother, not with the psychologists his mother had taken him to once she’d had him back in her care.
It was okay to be angry, several of them had told him gently. Maybe he could examine his anger; start with the little things, they’d coaxed, while his ten-year-old self had sat there and studied his ragged, chewed-off fingernails and told them he wasn’t angry, not him. Not with his father for topping himself, not with his mother for leaving them. She’d come back, hadn’t she? Once the old man was gone? She’d come back for her son who was volatile, and controlling and needy, just like his father, and she’d never once called him those things, just started praising all the other traits he possessed and sent him to shrinks to keep the crazy in check.
Why had he told Angie that? Why couldn’t he have left it at his father was dead?
She’d run now, if she had any sense. Away from this family. Away from him.
Evangeline Jones didn’t understand the stakes in this game, but Logan did. He knew how it went; the breaking of a woman’s will. Drip by tiny drip until it was all gone and she jumped at the sound of a footfall and flinched whenever someone moved too fast. He knew those games, knew every move.
Second hand.
Time to take himself in hand, thought Logan grimly as he sat up and ran his palms over his face. Do something about the want first. Take the edge off; the needy, greedy edge. Stay focused on the end game, which was staying strong and staying sane.
Hurting no one.
Hurting everyone.
Evie made it back to her room without encountering anyone. She made it to the en suite and stood there staring at the carnage Logan had wrought. Lips swollen from kisses that had gone too deep, complexion still rosy from the afterglow of good sex and her eyes dark with a mixture of shock and desire.
If a man tries to warn you over and over again that he’s damaged goods he probably is.
If he tells you that he has his reasons for not wanting too hard then he probably does.
If he tells you outright that he doesn’t want to hurt you, it’s because he knows that some day he will. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but he will, and he’s given you fair warning.
Evie turned her back on the face in the mirror and closed her eyes and tried not to remember the crazy things Logan made her feel. Time to forget the feelings and listen to what the man had to say and get out of his life as best she could. Tell Max she’d see him at work on Monday, make her apologies to Caroline Carmichael and leave.
She stripped off her dress and her underwear and tossed them over the edge of the bath. She headed for the shower and turned it on hot and hard and stood and let the water wash away the stench of cowardice that clung to her skin.
‘Walk away, Evie,’ she whispered, and set her palms to the wall in front of her and her face to the spray to wash away the sting of tears. ‘Run.’
And then the shower door behind her opened and Logan stepped in, fully dressed, and reached for her and she went to him without hesitation, wanting to comfort and be comforted, wanting his touch more than she wanted anything in this world. Riding that slippery slope of obsession and longing as the water poured down on them both and he pressed a condom packet into her hands and pushed her back against the wall and started kissing her.
Rough was the wrong word for what he wanted. Intense was a better word. All-consuming, as she helped him shed his clothes and laid hands to him, learning him all over again. Condom on and then Evie on as she put shoulders to the tiles and locked her legs around Logan’s waist and he was slow and forceful as he entered her, and the skin on his jaw tasted salty and a little bit rough, but his movements weren’t rough, not rough at all. His movements spoke of worship and wonder and a slamming, heartbreaking need as he claimed her body and offered up his own for her pleasure.
His touch was deft and agonisingly sensual as he cupped her and tilted her just so against him. Such tenuous control once passion came to play, and Evie was no help whatsoever, because wherever Logan led she went willingly.
He wanted her mindless to everything but his touch; and he succeeded.
He wanted her convulsing against him, with her mouth on his shoulder her only tether to this earth; and he succeeded.
She wanted him with her and this time he came when she did, eyes blazing, and his body straining, matching her gasp for gasp, with his mouth on hers, but only just, and his hand on the back of her neck as if he would never let her go.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered when his breath had slowed enough for speech. ‘Angie, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
